Peel This
by ryou-falling
Summary: If only my feet were not melting into the stone beneath me. If only those four hands would obey me and reach. If only the shadow did not open its mouth to swallow me whole…
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own YGO. I don't even own the computer I am writing this on.

A/N: part one of a rather trippy Malik exploration…no clue where this puppy is going…goes in search of leash

PEEL THIS

Part One: Yellow

In the early days, there were nightmares: spikes of nameless shadow that spilled over my eyes; four hands growing from the stumps of my arms; a face that was my face but terrible. And a distant sun that I was certain could save me, if only I could reach it. If only my feet were not melting into the stone beneath me. If only those four hands would obey me and reach. If only the shadow did not open its mouth to swallow me whole…

My own screams woke me.

Ishizu was already there.

"Shh. Shh. Shh,' she whispered and because she was Big Sister and shone like the moon, I believed her. Eyes trembling, I believed her. Clutching her long long fingers…I believed her.

I told her my nightmare.

She listened, troubled. "It was a dream," she finally said, voice silk in the dark. "But you must be patient, brother. Father knows the time is nearing." I looked up at her and she wrapped one narrow arm around my shoulders. She smelled of insense and dust, her breath of ancient things. "Soon you will walk freely in the sunlight with me."

"Soon sister?" My voice, worn thin from crying, broke.

"Yes." She smiled and enfolded me. A willow thin body, breastless, nothing but angles and hard edges. Her body, then, what mine would become. I clung to her with baby fat hands and laughed into her hair.

The promise of the sun, that mythological thing, the golden beast that hovered at the edges of my dreams, was enough to quell my fear. A torch flickered and I laughed again. The flame teased me because I knew the truth now: the sconces of light that flickered against the walls here were playthings. The imitation of Day.

Soon, I would leap into reality and grasp the light with my own two hands.

---

The monster of my age began cutting its teeth at age eleven.

And I, feeling the incomprehensible urge to bite into the world, begged Big Sister Ishizu to take me to the surface. Begged her five times a day. Cried twice. Groveled once. Offered to carry her across the sand on my back. Offered Rishid's favorite sandals. Offered my own sandals. Threatened her. Hurt myself. Refused to eat. Whispered into her ear as she slept. Stared silently, despondently, at the ceiling.

In the end, she took me. After all, she had promised.

---

We left in secret.

And I discovered that the sun thickened the world. Outside, air became wine, warm in my throat. I tilted my head back in my own childish ecstasy and felt my skin expand. My eyes drank the sky. Painful blue. And all around me: men, women, golden skin, quick hands and eyes, pale robes that curled into impossible shades of green, yellow, pearl.

Did my sister see this?

"Ishizu!" I cried.

The sand was a new creature, blinding, ferocious, grinning. No torches here, no small illicit shadows. I laughed, delighted, and tugged on my sister's hand. But she seemed frightened; the moon knowing the perils of her path, knowing that when she crosses the sun, it will destroy her.

I, certain that I was not so fragile, rushed into it all.

"Brother!" Ishizu called, belatedly, her narrow fingers outstretched, wide eyes darker for the sunlight.

I danced, a circle, a private ceremony to honor this new, intoxicating religion. "Ishizu, come with me!"

But she only stood. Ancient goddess, body forever young, already crumbling.

I did not yet understand. This world had already taken her.

/reviews always welcome/


	2. Chapter 2

PEEL THIS

Part Two: Red

In the ancient world, our name was sex and death; a goddess of fertility and war. Ishizu once said that we were all destined to pass through the seven gates of hell.

But Big Sister's hell was far more accessable than my own. Cairo. Giza. Tokyo. Domino. She saw these as the underworld incarnate. Even the small village she first took me to wreaked of modern evils, she later told me, when she was a woman and I a man. She looked at me with the distance of years and the discrepancies of our bodies between us and told me how distasteful my obsessions were. How I had whored my soul to the gods of metal.

And she could not forgive me the death of our father.

To children, the delights of evil are decadent not because they are forbidden, but because they are foreign. They come as strange and exotic visitors wearing glamorous robes and carrying luminous trinkets.

The falacy you all believe: Evil is dark. It isn't. It is luminous. A swaddling, warm light and, to a child bred in the dusty caverns of a forgotten world, it is intoxicating. It is only after it had embraced me that I began to realize the claws had sunk so deep into my veins that if I pulled them out, I would bleed to death.

But here was this little boy. Evil. Same height as me, same eyes as me, same length of body, same small and perfect lips. Same fear of the dark, (though he would never admit it). And I could feel him swelling over me in quick successive waves, the four arms stretching out stretching out, my expression becoming sharper, beyond my control, my hair standing on end, the sensation unpleasant and prickling as the folicles arched.

The pain of it was warm. Equisite. And I felt the first stirrings of adulthood when that Other child took me. That tell-tale pleasure sickness that radiates from the pit of the stomach to the chest and then down, down between the legs. That throbbing warmth is Evil to me, even now. It frightens me to touch it. Still...I do. And the embrace is that rare luxury that never quite looses its appeal because it presses itself into my consciousness, penetrates with a startling lucidity.

The world is far more real when I let it take me.

You believe I did not know I killed my father? That I woke as if from some unpleasant dream and, confused, saw that body? I knew what I'd done. Oh, I knew. I remember the warm spurt of his blood against my knuckles, the twist of his face as I ground the blade into his lung and heart. The way his robes shushed against the floor.

Shh. Shh. Shh.

Hush little Malik. Don't look little Malik. Rishid's arms around me, his scent terrified and strong. Hush now. That night he lay beside me, big brother arms and a body that still smelled of blood, and he rocked me to sleep.

I knew what I'd done. And I cried, because I was supposed to cry, wasn't I?

But Big Sister knew.

Children are such devious things.


End file.
